Statistics

Podbean has made some exciting upgrades to our statistics platform. We’ve added some new statistics to help podcasters gain more insight into their audience and improved the user experience. Here’s a tour of all the improvements and the new dashboard:

Overview Tab

The statistics have been reorganized and simplified, to make it easy to get a quick view of the podcast’s performance and easily drill down with fewer clicks. All key stats are available under this tab now, instead of under separate tabs.

User retention chart: gives a snapshot of the number of listeners from week to week. This helps you gain insight into listener loyalty (i.e. are new listeners sticking with your show, are there drop off trends?).

2. Trending chart: download trends for all episodes during the time period. Scroll over and click on any date to get details and examine downloads by episode on that date.

3. Where your audience comes from: geographic stats for the time period. Map and list show the top five (worldwide countries, U.S. states and Canadian provinces). Click “view more” to view all.

4. Downloads by time of day: a 24-hour chart by day showing your download trends. You’ll be able to get a quick view of popular download times.

Downloads Tab

This tab provides more detail and comparisons for downloads. You can now choose a custom date range. You can look at all episodes, a specific episode, or compare episodes for the date range you choose. When looking at all episodes, you’ll also see a list of your top 10 episodes below.

Spotify Trending

If your podcast is on Spotify via Podbean’s partnership program, Spotify’s statistics can be viewed here as before.

We hope these improvements help you more easily gain better insights into your audience behavior and podcast performance. If you have any questions, contact us here or via live chat anytime.

You may have noticed some cool new options in your Podbean stats. We’re bringing you more data and easier comparison tools to help you better understand your podcast’s performance.

The initial period after a podcast is released is a key indicator for both you and sponsors, so we’ve added views of your first 60 day downloads and a chart with first week and month’s download numbers (along with all time). This is also useful when you do promotional activities around new episodes, to see what’s working, which guests or topics get the best response and more. With an easier way to compare episodes over different periods of time, you can see which episodes hold value and continue gaining traction. And, you can quickly view top episodes for any time period as well.

We’re excited to announce these enhancements to the statistics platform:

Trending graph

Compare episode downloads trends for up to 5 episodes in any date range.

First 60 days downloads trend: see how episodes perform in the critical first 60 days (by episode, all episodes or comparing up to 5 at a time).

Episode downloads quick comparison table

Easily compare key download statistics for the 1st week, 1st month and all time for your episodes

Top 10 Episodes

You can view your Top 10 episodes in any selected date range.

GEO data for Canadian provinces

Now, in addition to U.S. states, you can see the breakdown of your Canada downloads by province.

We hope these additions provide you valuable insights!

As always, if you have questions or would like to share your input on our stats platform, you can contact us at help.podbean.com.

Accurate statistics have always been a strong focus of the Podbean podcasting platform. Over the past few years, we’ve worked hard to use stringent filtering criteria and monitor technology changes to provide the best podcast statistics.

To further this and join with our peers in standardized measurement practices, we have updated our stats system according to the IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines. Many of you have asked us about this so we are happy to be able to make this announcement. Fortunately, due to our team’s continuing work over the years this required only minimal change. As of April 3rd, we will release the completely updated system to fulfill all the guidelines.

IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines: What are they and why does it matter?

“The IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines 2.0* are the result of the Podcast Technical Working Group’s efforts to provide clarity in the marketplace by developing a common language around measurement. In addition to defining standard metrics for both podcast content and podcast ads, this document also provides guidance on some of the technical details such as request filtering, in order to reduce the discrepancies currently seen across podcast publishers and tech vendors.” –IAB Tech Lab

As the accepted industry standard, advertisers and other interested parties seek statistics that meet these guidelines. Podcasters can confidently provide data knowing there are standard metrics.

What does this mean to me?

With the release of the new stats system, podcasters may see some changes in statistics after April 3rd. Our testing indicates download #s may be reduced by about 10-20%. The reduced number reflects a change in the time period for filtering to get the unique download statistic. In all other ways, the statistics system and data provided will remain the same.

You can contact Support online or via live chat if you have questions about your statistics (or anything else!). We know change, especially when it comes to numbers, can be unsettling. But, we understand the importance of ensuring our metrics are fully comparable. And, we know how valuable this is to our podcasters.

Podbean provides robust statistics for you to analyze your podcast’s success. We like to offer as much information as possible on what’s happening with your podcast. Therefore, we previously included “Feed Hits” in your Podbean stats dashboard along with your filtered downloads and other key data. Here’s a full explanation of feed hits and unique downloads.

However, based on customer feedback, we’ve decided to streamline the dashboard to remove “Feed Hits”. Our goal is to eliminate possible confusion and make it easier for podcasters to focus on the key industry metric of unique downloads. For an overview of your Podbean stats and how to use them, check out Four Key Statistics to Understand Your Podcast Audience.

If you still wish to view the detail of feed hits, you can enable them in your Podbean setting page-> Feed/iTunes->Advanced Feed Settings.

In case you missed it, you can also get User Engagement Intel for a deep dive into how your audience is actual engaging with your podcast.

In addition to providing innovative podcast hosting services, Podbean has a strong listener community. With over 1.5 million installs of the Podbean app and 350,000+ active weekly users, Podbean is increasingly where podcast fans go for their podcasts.

The Podbean app offers many listener-friendly features. It’s also beneficial for podcasters, who can interact with listeners and get exposure. (You can also record and publish using the app!) To improve podcast discovery, the app organizes podcasts in categories and unique topics (like “Scary Stories” for Halloween). Podbean also prominently displays featured and recommended podcasts. The system analyzes users’ behavior to suggest podcasts they might like as well.

The Secret Room Podcast Case Study

Being Featured=An Explosion of Downloads and Subscribers

We always hear from podcasts about their growth in downloads and subscribers after being featured. Today, we’re going to share a case study with specific numbers. The Secret Room podcast was featured in the Podbean recommended banner for a little over a week. Here is what Ben Hamm, co-host of The Secret Room, had to say:

Podcast discovery is an issue that’s been vexing our nascent industry since day one. Aside from word of mouth, which is perhaps the most accessible and powerful marketing tool podcasters have, getting the attention of media is a powerful audience driver. The Secret Room has enjoyed its greatest subscriber bumps when we were featured on iTunes and the Canadian Broadcasting Company….and Podbean.

I’ve been so lucky to receive advice and support from other podcasters. In return to the community I’m delighted to pull back the curtain on the impact being featured on Podbean had on Secret Room downloads. People should note that while being featured is a key part of the puzzle, you also have to have compelling artwork to get those click throughs to your show, and great content to retain ears.

Statistics

Average release day downloads: increased 80%

Average daily downloads: increased 200%

Podbean subscribers: growth of almost 400%

Podbean plays: 130% increase

*based on the higher #s of the range before and during the Podbean feature

The Secret Room: a podcast about the stories no one ever tells, can be found on Podbean and on the Podbean app.

The world of podcast statistics can be a bit confusing, but we’re here to simplify it for you. There are various stats you can see to analyze your podcast’s success and audience behavior. You may want to read “Key Statistics to Understand Your Podcast Audience”.

The statistic that most podcasters (and sponsors) care about is downloads. The number of unique downloads you get for each episode shows the approximate size of your listening audience.

So, what is a download? Where do I find statistics on listens via various apps and streaming?

A download indicates any time your file is directly downloaded (i.e. a listener hits that download button and gets the whole file) or when someone listens to/streams the episode. Technically, the way podcasting works, the file is downloaded when someone listens in a player, app or other streaming method (a stream is just a progressive download for a podcast). Therefore, when you’re looking at your downloads you should see a full picture of the size of your audience across various players, website downloads, iTunes, apps, etc.

Unique Downloads

Podcast hosting and statistics services also filter these downloads according to accepted standards to show your unique downloads (a more accurate picture of your listening audience). In other words, some apps and podcatchers may hit your feed numerous times. Podcasting companies like Podbean use a formula to filter out downloads coming repeatedly from the same IP address for the media file within a certain timeframe.
So, the downloads stats you will find under “Trending” in your Podbean statistics provide an accurate picture of the number of downloads/listens. You can view these by episode and different time periods.

Feed Hits

Feed Hits show the number of times your podcast feed is fetched. Podcast apps, such as the Apple podcast app, fetch your podcast feed to check if there is a new episode. If there is a new episode and the user’s iPhone settings allow downloads, the new episode will be downloaded to the phone. If there is no new episode, nothing will be downloaded. So, “Feed Hits” and “Downloads” are related but not equivalent.

You can check feed hits on Podbean, though we hide it by default because it is not a useful statistic for understanding audience reach.

How do I see how many subscribers I have?

You can view your Podbean subscribers/followers in the app or on your site. Apple does not provide a window into that information on their platform. So, you can only estimate subscribers based on download behavior. This is why download numbers are so important as a method of gauging audience reach.

How do I know if someone actually listens?

When files are downloaded or streamed to many devices, it is difficult to know what happens from there. The person may never listen, or they may listen multiple times or with a group of friends.

However, proprietary apps and players can collect greater user intelligence. For example, we can see what listeners are doing when they use Podbean players and the Podbean app. Though this may not show your total audience’s behavior, it can provide great insight about your podcast. Podbean offers “User Engagement Intel” as an enhanced feature in the Podbean app marketplace. With this feature enabled, you’ll get data about how long people listen, what parts of the episode they skip or repeat, and average engagement.

Podcasters always wonder if users actually play their podcasts after they’re downloaded. Do users listen to the whole episode or drop off at some point? At what point do most people stop listening, or do they skip certain content? Now with Podbean’s “User Engagement Intel”, you get the answers to all these questions.

User Engagement Intelligence reveals insights into the behavior of your users on the Podbean app and players. Podcasters can easily see what portions users play over and over, what they skip, when they stop listening and more. This allows a podcaster to gain deeper knowledge of how their audience is responding to content. In-depth user intel can help in attracting and managing sponsorships and listener support, as well as improving marketing strategy and content development.

How does it work?

Visit the Podbean app market and purchase “User Engagement Intel” (click on “Get App” and select the channel if you have multiple channels).

In your Podbean admin, go to “Settings→Apps”. Click on the “View” icon for “User Engagement Intel” to see your data. Data is actively tracked for the 10 most recent episodes (contact us if you would like to track more episodes).

Select an episode to view data. You can see: average user engagement % (total user play time divided by the # of users times length of the episode) and average play time. You can scroll over the graph and zoom in for more detail, by the second. For private podcasts, you can also view data on who is listening and their individual listening patterns.

With a deeper understanding of your users and their behavior, you can act based on data instead of guessing. You can spot possible trends and better achieve desired outcomes for your podcast.

Podbean’s App Behavior Intel provides detailed analysis of listener behavior within the Podbean podcast app. This includes when and where podcasts are being listened to (and who is listening, in the case of private podcasts), as well as length of listening/what portions of the podcast were played. This data is only for listening that is done via the Podbean podcast app (for Android or iPhone), whether streamed or downloaded.

*See update below.

*This feature has been updated and is now called “User Engagement Intel“, available to all Podbean podcasters. It now includes data from all plays in both the Podbean app and through any Podbean player.